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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Effective use of Escorts  (Read 3606 times)

TaLaR

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #15 on: September 28, 2019, 02:19:01 PM »

Salamanders are not that harmless. DEs or Cruisers can be easily disabled by 1-2 hits (or at least significantly slowed).

Pilums caught on shield cost hard flux, ones intercepted by PD - only soft. PD also secures Pilum-free area around the ship, which allows some shield-dropping and venting.

AI is also very much distracted by both Pilums and Salamanders, intercepting them early significantly reduces this distraction. And you need only token PD to do so.
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Igncom1

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #16 on: September 28, 2019, 02:26:02 PM »

LOL yeah my current conquests each have 4 medium salamander launchers. They utterly kneecap just about anything that they fight with massive swarms of those EMP missiles.

That or the distract enough of the enemies PD, positioning, and shields that they simply get shot at anyway.
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Sunders are the best ship in the game.

Plantissue

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #17 on: September 28, 2019, 03:47:20 PM »

Salamanders are not harmless. Their funny homing ability causes curving paths confuse frigates which try to rotate to face them and often hit frigates before they can be destroyed. Which just leaves frigates vulnerable as most of their ability to survive is in their movement. The more salamanders you have, the better, and they can be fitted on any small or medium mounts. Anything that gets hit by them and get their engines disabled usually die shortly after as they can't manoeuvre. Even if the engines aren't hit, it can also disable weapons. Salmanders often rather suprisingly are able to avoid getting destroyed by  vulcan cannons and machine guns due to the homing ability.

Anyways I've found Tempests and Omens to be good ships to assign them to escort with, but that probably because the Tempest kill every other frigate and is survivable and the Omen kills every missile and fighter near it. Both are fast. Other than that I haven't really done much testing with escort.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2019, 03:55:14 PM by Plantissue »
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Megas

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #18 on: September 28, 2019, 03:53:05 PM »

Salamander is the Brawler killer.  If I want to use Brawler, I need to get Shield Conversion: Omni on it.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #19 on: September 28, 2019, 04:03:12 PM »

A single salamander hit will knock out an auroras engines, I know that from experience. They are the single most annoying thing in the game for me.
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sotanaht

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #20 on: September 28, 2019, 04:23:18 PM »

A single salamander hit will knock out an auroras engines, I know that from experience. They are the single most annoying thing in the game for me.
Probably just need to use Resistant Flux Conduits.  I can't imagine why you wouldn't use it anyway, since 25% faster active venting is massive for a player ship and still pretty impact for AI even if they only infrequently use it.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #21 on: September 28, 2019, 07:58:46 PM »

I don't use it because it costs OP, and there are more important things to put on the ship. I don't let the AI pilot auroras, and for the player, I can back off and vent freely at any time so doing it a little faster doesn't matter much. I also max vents so my venting time is fast anyway. I would like the EMP resistance but it's much less important than vents and other hull mods like ITU and hardened shields that actually let me fight more effectively.
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Yunru

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #22 on: September 29, 2019, 05:51:47 AM »

Obviously the capital ship is dedicated point defence and the escorts are the ship killers :P

Plantissue

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Re: Effective use of Escorts
« Reply #23 on: September 29, 2019, 06:50:33 AM »

Funnily enough that's kind of how my fleets go.

Having played nearly every fleet composition, I just have a bland mishmash of ships that can survive most things and deal damage, tending to ward off or destroy anything destroyer or smaller, whilst I run around with a phase ship seeking opportunities to destroy big ships.
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